Creating a website has never been a simple affair. Even the most straightforward website takes time, money, and know-how to steer it in the proper direction. That’s where Wix vs WordPress comes into play.
Wix and WordPress are two website creators that help you build your website. Wix is an excellent website builder if you have little technical expertise and want a one-stop solution. On the other hand, WordPress is a content management system (CMS).
You can make websites on both platforms, which share one goal: to provide users with simple means to create unique and user-friendly websites. It all depends on your unique website-building demands.
We will compare Wix vs WordPress in various areas for healthy competition. It’s time to begin the battle.
What is Wix?
Wix is an all-in-one, drag-and-drop, cloud-based web development platform suitable for both non-coders and novices. Users may create e-commerce websites using Wix’s online tools.
Wix is pre-built with everything and allows you to build your web page immediately. It is a beginner-friendly, scalable business website builder with hundreds of templates. You may create and sell through your website with Wix.
What is WordPress?
WordPress is a self-hosted, open-source CMS (content management system) that enables you to build much bigger websites, but you must have more technical expertise. In the beginning, it was primarily utilized as a blogging platform.
Because of its straightforwardness, you can use WordPress to construct any website. Furthermore, WordPress is a well-liked platform for multinational online retailers.
Because it connects to prominent worldwide marketplaces such as Etsy, eBay, Amazon, and others, online merchants may operate numerous shops from one location.
Wix vs WordPress: Overview
Wix is a brilliant website builder while WordPress is a CMS— both come with advantages and trade-offs. Building a large website with Wix isn’t recommended because the editor becomes sluggish with too many pages.
You can create a portfolio website with Wix, an easy website builder that provides you with various options.
With WordPress, you can build larger websites but need more technical know-how. While all Wix packages include web hosting and technical support, WordPress is an open-source platform that requires you to install and maintain it yourself.
It isn’t easy to use WordPress because the editor is separated from the page content, making it challenging to build a page. You must obtain a web host and install it on your site. If there are any technical problems, it’s up to you to resolve them.
In contrast, Wix provides a simple visual editor and allows users to create pages using a graphic, drag-and-drop editor. WordPress is open-source and has thousands of plugins and themes, but those plugins and themes can be challenging to put into action.
Let’s study the in-depth difference between Wix vs WordPress.
Wix vs WordPress: Pricing
Picking the best website building platform depends on the cost of developing and maintaining your site and your needs. The expense of developing and maintaining your website depends entirely on your requirements. Let’s compare the price of Wix vs WordPress.
Wix
Wix offers a free plan, but in our experience, the free Wix plan is not a good choice. The reasons are listed below:
- You cannot remove advertisements from your website.
- You cannot use a custom domain name.
- You must use the username.wix.com/sitename format.
- You cannot sell online and receive essential customer support rather than a priority support option.
You’ll need to upgrade to one of their eight premium plans to unlock more features from their website builder apps. Each Wix premium plan comes with specific storage and bandwidth limits. You may purchase a monthly or yearly plan.
You must select a Business & eCommerce plan if you want eCommerce and business features. Small business websites and eCommerce plans start at $23/mo.
Wix’s App Market provides a wide range of free and paid plugins you may use to add extra functionality to your website (such as chatbots, event booking, image animations, and more).
Because the cost of a Wix premium plan already includes tons of features to get you started, we haven’t included plugin fees in the price. If you buy an annual Wix plan (as opposed to purchasing month-to-month), you may save up to 30% per year.
The annual charges for Wix vary from $192 to $708, depending on the package you select. Despite Wix being the ‘paid-for’ product and WordPress being open source, Wix can, in theory, be significantly cheaper.
WordPress
Because WordPress is an open-source CMS (Content Management System), you can download and use it for free. However, a CMS is not the only equipment you will need to launch a website. Unlike Wix (and all other website builders), CMSs such as WordPress require you to buy your own:
- Hosting provider ($2.95/month for Bluehost)
- A custom domain name ($10/year)
And in addition to these requirements, you might want to purchase a few of these optional extras:
- Pre-made WordPress themes ($25-$299)
- Plugins for extra features ($0-$70 each)
Even though WordPress is free, the cost to create a live website is anywhere from $0-$200, plus an ongoing monthly fee of $10-$40.
Unless you have the time to work on your WordPress site or require some customization that you can’t handle, you should also consider the cost of a WordPress developer. Working with a developer will likely increase the final price by at least a few hundred dollars.
Wix vs WordPress: Ease of Use
Many no-coding platforms are available, and beginners prefer Wix or WordPress. Let’s look at which one is simpler for people without coding experience.
Wix
With Wix, you can place text, photos, slideshows, shopping cart buttons, and other elements on your website. It has a quick and simple drag-and-drop editor.
Although Wix’s drag-and-drop editor simplifies things a little, we can’t deny that it has some limitations. You can’t, for example, create a Wix template from scratch.
However, it was designed for novices and mid-level website developers to be able to build a unique website without coding or technical skills. There are, in our view, more advantages than disadvantages to using Wix.
WordPress
You can edit your pages directly in WordPress with the live block editor. You can use blocks to create impressive visual layouts by adding text, headings, buttons, background images, galleries, and other active content.
You can install thousands of free themes on your website using WordPress. You can customize them using the live theme customizer. You can also use some of the most intuitive drag-and-drop website builder plugins to edit your site visually.
Due to the wide variety of choices and tools available in these drag-and-drop editors, you can build unique websites without writing any code. For example, you may use SeedProd or Divi to create a custom website without coding using WordPress.
When talking about ease of use, Wix and WordPress are tied. The ability to write content, build pages, and manage both business and eCommerce websites without coding is provided by both.
While Wix’s editor interface is excellent, it doesn’t offer advanced features. You can extend WordPress’s user-friendly interface with a little effort.
Wix vs WordPress: Design & Layout
An appealing design and structure are critical to your success. Every site owner needs a web design that is beautiful and user-friendly and helps establish their brand. Let’s examine how Wix vs WordPress offers better plans and layout options.
Wix
With more than 900 pre-designed Wix layouts to pick from, you can personalize your website by using the built-in functions. All Wix designs are responsive and created in HTML5.
You may change the layout, alter the content, and arrange items in any manner you desire using the provided tools. A template represents every website type. Templates are categorized into business, eCommerce, hobbies, crafts, personal, and other categories.
You may adjust and customize your site as much as you like, but you cannot switch to another template once you have selected one.
WordPress
WordPress has thousands of free and premium themes, both of which are available for download. Free themes are extensively tested and supported, although they are limited. Paid themes are available for purchase and come with premium support services.
You can alter most WordPress themes using built-in customization features. You may use many style plugins to customize or style your WordPress theme.
Paid themes are available at several locations, such as Astra, StudioPress, Themify, CSSIgniter, and more. Furthermore, you may hire a developer or learn to develop a custom WordPress theme for your business.
There are more theme and design options available on WordPress than on Wix. Furthermore, WordPress users can change themes or alter them without limitations.
Wix vs WordPress: Plugins and Apps
An appealing design and structure are critical to your success. Every site owner needs a web design that is beautiful and user-friendly and helps establish their brand. Let’s look at how Wix vs WordPress compares in this area.
Wix
Using the App Market, you can add up to 300 different applications to your Wix website in just a few moments. Both paid and free apps are available in several categories, including eCommerce, media, and marketing.
The editor makes managing your apps simple. Every application is pre-integrated with Wix sites, and the dashboard has quick access links that make everything much easier and more user-friendly.
Wix verifies every third-party application to ensure that it meets in-house standards, making sure you will not find any applications that haven’t been pre-approved by the Wix team in the market.
WordPress
Anyone can create a WordPress plugin for free or paid using open source technology. Because of this, there are over 55,000 WordPress plugins available.
The advantage of open source is that you will probably be able to find the website tools you want. The drawback is that there is no approval procedure for creating a WordPress plugin, so you might have to sift through a few bad ones to find the one you want.
However, you will always be close to user reviews that can point you in the right direction with a quick Google search.
Everything on Wix is tested and controlled by a private development team, which ensures higher quality. However, this doesn’t detract from WordPress having an impressive number of plugins on display.
Wix’s app library may be growing, but it is still limited compared to the large variety of options available to WordPress users.
Wix vs WordPress: Ecommerce
Most beginners look for an online store feature when they start a business. Let’s look at how Wix vs WordPress compares in this area.
Wix
Wix’s eCommerce service is available for premium members only. Users with the accessible version of Wix cannot run an eCommerce store unless they upgrade to a paid plan.
Wix’s dedicated online store section has a few sophisticated solutions. It supports payments, taxes, delivery, and more.
The development of new features is ongoing. It helps digital products and is one of the most economical e-commerce website builders.
The support of language-specific sites is one of the most excellent features, particularly if you have a multilingual store. However, you won’t have total control over the URL, which is not ideal.
Wix sites are slower to load due to their content-heavy themes, which makes for a less-than-ideal customer experience (and may harm SEO). Because there is only one sub-level in the navigation, it is harder to organize more extensive product catalogs.
WordPress
To set up your online shop, you can utilize WordPress’s most popular eCommerce framework, WooCommerce. Additionally, several other eCommerce plugins for WordPress allow you to sell physical or virtual goods, services, events, subscriptions, and more.
WordPress is the optimal platform if you want to sell digital subscriptions using MemberPress. You can promote online courses, pay-per-view content, and membership plans for your online community using MemberPress.
Digital downloads, such as eBooks, music, software licenses, and more, may also be sold using Easy Digital Downloads. Many eCommerce plugins for WordPress come with dedicated themes and bonus plugins.
When you want to create a complete eCommerce site with many options, WordPress + WooCommerce is a better option than Wix.
Wix vs WordPress: SEO
SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is enhancing your website for search engines. Search engines such as Google rank your website higher if it is SEO optimized. Let’s compare Wix vs WordPress in terms of SEO.
Wix
Wix has a large number of SEO apps that are designed in-house, with Site Booster being the most well-known. It’s free for Unlimited or higher Wix users, but those on Free and Combo plans will pay $3.75/month.
Site Booster includes a variety of SEO features, such as embedding your business address in search results, keyword targeting, and performance tracking. Wix offers a large amount of SEO-specific apps compared to other website builders.
In addition to this, Google Analytics has been integrated with Wix. This integration lets you see how customers interact with your website in real-time.
WordPress
A WordPress site, if properly configured, can perform exceptionally well from an SEO perspective and might outperform a Wix site. WordPress sites can perform well on mobile SEO, as creating fully-responsive WordPress sites (preferred by search engine algorithms) is simple.
There are also many fantastic SEO plugins like RankMath and Yoast. If you don’t already know, this plugin assesses the quality of your on-page SEO efforts and provides suggestions for further improvement.
AMP is also supported by WordPress, allowing you to create more comprehensive mobile websites (which can deliver SEO benefits). You can also choose whatever hosting you like for a WordPress site. Sites run incredibly fast as a result of this technology.
Wix and WordPress have built-in SEO tools, apps, and plugins that provide more advanced SEO functionality. Although Yoast is slightly more powerful, Site Booster is available with all Wix plans at no extra cost.
Wix vs WordPress: Blogging
Many people seek a more straightforward method to begin blogging. Wix and WordPress both offer blogging services. Let’s see whether one is superior to the other.
Wix
Wix offers the most elementary blogging features: it supports content, includes categories and tags, and provides an archive of free media like pictures, videos, and GIFs. You won’t find everything you need here if your website has a blog.
You’ll have to look elsewhere if your goal is to establish a blog.
Wix blogs are slow and harder to manage than WordPress. There is no excellent commenting functionality on Wix sites. Several functions, including backdating posts, creating private posts, and more, are not available.
The blog post interface is unlike the Wix website builder. It utilizes a text editor that has limited formatting options. Wix websites are still mobile-friendly, so it’s easier for readers to read your blog while on the go.
WordPress
Since WordPress is such a powerful CMS, you can publish and organize virtually limitless amounts of blog content on your website.
It provides a few additional blogging features compared to Wix, such as an optional private mode that hides specific blog posts from your readers and a native commenting section that only users with WordPress accounts can see.
In addition to this, you have:
- The ability to post a single picture across a blog post.
- The ability to publish blog entries on a specific date.
- The ability to post in multiple languages.
WordPress is exceptionally good at blogging, but Wix has one critical advantage that it does not: WordPress does not offer a free media library. Instead, bloggers must find their own free and copyright-free pictures online at sites like Pexels and Pixabay.
There is no comparison between WordPress and Wix when it comes to blogging. Wix blogs are too essential and lack several key features. If you want to start a blog, do not consider Wix; use WordPress instead.
Wix vs WordPress: Help and Support
Support facilities are essential for every user. You may need technical help at some point while developing your website. Let’s compare Wix vs WordPress in terms of service.
Wix
Wix’s in-house support team is available by phone or email Monday through Thursday from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. EST. Wix also provides in-house articles and video tutorials to assist you. In addition to direct support, Wix offers a wide range of helpful articles and video tutorials.
You can rely on Wix for high-quality support since it has a dedicated team of support professionals. You can also rely on Wix’s easy-to-use editor since you won’t need to seek much help.
WordPress
There are fewer individuals to turn to for support with WordPress compared to other content management systems. Because it is open source, phone support is a lot less helpful. Instead, you must rely heavily on posts from other WordPress users.
There are so many WordPress websites out there that someone will likely have the answer to anything you want. On the other hand, it may be challenging to locate what you need through thousands of lower-quality articles.
A skilled WordPress developer can assist you with establishing, customizing, and modifying your website, but this might get costly.
To avoid spending much money, consider your host’s support options before hiring a developer. For example, Bluehost offers round-the-clock access to WordPress experts.
There is a lot more support and assistance provided by Wix than by WordPress. WordPress supports are provided mainly by impersonal articles from various users, while the support at Wix is all in-house and easy to reach.
Wix vs WordPress: Data Portability
With data portability, you can move your content wherever you want. Let’s examine how Wix and WordPress assist you in transferring your content and using it elsewhere.
Wix
Wix doesn’t provide much flexibility when shifting your content to another platform. You may only export your blog posts in XML format. You must manually download your pages, images, videos, and other material.
According to Wix documentation, all your material is hosted exclusively on Wix’s servers and cannot be transferred to other platforms. Moving your content to another platform if necessary may be challenging, but you may still share a Wix website.
WordPress
WordPress makes it simple to export your content. With a single-click exporter, you can save your content in XML format. You can even create complete WordPress backups, download your media files, and manually export your WordPress database if you host your WordPress site.
You may move your site to a different host if you are unsatisfied with your current WordPress hosting company.
Wix makes it quite challenging to move your content away, whereas WordPress makes it much easier to download and transfer your data.
Wix vs WordPress: Which is better?
When you’re determining a website builder, it’s necessary to know what sort of site you want. To build a website that will grow with time, you should choose WordPress.
Furthermore, if you need complex features immediately, WordPress is the only way to create a sophisticated blog, directory, multilingual site, complex database, and FTP access.
Wix, however, is much better suited for smaller, informative websites. It is an excellent choice for bookings-based businesses (such as yoga studios, salons, and online exercise classes) and restaurants and event-based services (such as photography or wedding photography businesses) because it describes your industry and what you do and how to contact you.
You may also operate a small eCommerce store with Wix. It is better for new users as it provides drag and drop features and dedicated assistance, two things that can save you a lot of time and frustration in the long run. You can test Wix for free and learn more about this powerful platform.
Wix vs WordPress: FAQs
Which is better, Wix or WordPress?
While WordPress is technologically superior, you must have development skills (or employ someone who does) to get the most out of it. For those who don’t have coding or web design skills, Wix is often a better fit.
What is the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org?
Anyone can use the free, open-source content management system WordPress. In a more straightforward language, WordPress.org is a software solution you can download and install on a webserver to create, manage, and alter content on a website.
WordPress.com is a website-building and publishing service owned by Automattic. It’s a specially tailored hosting platform for WordPress.org websites. Even though CMS is the foundation of a website, it is up to you to create, maintain, and manage it.
How much does it cost to build a website with Wix?
You can build a website using Wix for free! Premium plans are available for $27 to $59 per month (paid yearly), or slightly more if you prefer to pay monthly. Though there is a free plan, it has limitations—your website won’t connect to a personal domain and will have Wix advertisements.
How much does it cost to build a website with WordPress?
Hosting and domain names ($5 to $10 per month) are two things you’ll need to acquire in WordPress. You’ll also want to buy a premium theme ($30 to $80) and plugins ($15 to $50). The initial outlay will probably be around $200.
Is Wix cheaper than WordPress?
Both Wix and WordPress are available in several different pricing models. Wix is a comprehensive platform that includes everything you need to create a website. WordPress is free, but you must obtain everything besides the open-source CMS program.
Every “everything” you want beyond the open-source CMS platform is priced differently, and so is a premium managed WordPress hosting plan from Kinsta, Cloudways, WpEngine, and other firms. As little as $1/month is all you need to put up a shared web host. We can say WordPress is slightly cheaper than Wix.
Is Wix easier to use than WordPress?
Wix is more straightforward to use than WordPress. Wix provides ready-to-go websites, web hosting, SSL, and more, all of which you can create using an easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor.
However, for WordPress, you must buy web hosting, SSL, themes, and more. In addition, you’ll need to keep it up and running, and, at times, you’ll need coding expertise to make it work.
Can I switch from Wix to WordPress?
There is no direct way to transfer from Wix to WordPress, but you can find time-consuming and complicated methods on the web.
Wrapping Up
Choosing between Wix vs WordPress if you want to develop a website for your small business is straightforward. The decision depends on how much time and effort you are willing to invest and how much complexity your business requires.
If you’d like an entry-level website that will impress your customers, Wix is a great option. If you want to invest in a system that expands with your company, start with WordPress.com and upgrade to an open-source option.
